Re: What's been the most valuable course you have taken?

[Tothscribe -at- aol -dot- com]

Oh, this thread I can't resist.  Not with the ink still wet on my Master's degree in Writing.

>what courses in particular have list members taken 
>that have proven immediately useful in actually 
>getting a particular job or contract 

Hmmm... THE most important, life-changing class I had in grad school was "Rhetoric: The Art of Persuasion."  Why is such an important subject left to a single semester of grad school when it and logic should be drilled as a requirement from middle school and up?  

Nevertheless, I cannot point to a single specific job I've gotten just because of it.  However, that class and the reading I've done since then have influenced everything I've done since then.  After all, all we do is a form of persuasion - hire me instead of the other guy, buy my product, accept my article, agree with my changes, use my ideas, etc., etc., etc.

If I have to point to a career-specific class, it would be "Grant Writing."  Just to have the experience of writing a grant, albeit for a small non-profit that hasn't used it, is enough to make HR people look interested.

A good grammar course is always useful.  It gives you background to defend your minor changes... and it taught me how to intimidate people by diagramming sentences. I only did that once, but the guy who kept rearranging my punctuation never argued with me in a meeting again!

But to tell the truth, the most career-changing class I ever took was "Basics of MacroMedia Director."  Not because I learned all that much about Director (all I learned was that I am not now nor will I ever be a programmer) but because the teacher was dyslexic.  So he wanted someone to sub-contract the writing part of the online tutorial he'd been hired to create and liked the way I handled myself in class.  That little subcontract is the entire foundation of my career as a technical writer.  

>is there any obvious preference for knowledge gained 
>from a course as opposed to knowledge gained from self-study?

Well, I find that employers seem to be more interested when I tell them I learned something in a formal setting.  "I have taken two classes in Section 508" gets a lot better response than "I am familiar with the requirements of Section 508."  At one point (while the company still paid for training) I could even say "I am earning a certificate in Section 508" and that *really* made them sit up and pay attention... even though I was underwhelmed by the classes and would be learning far more from reading a stack of books on the subject.

But on the other hand, I am addicted to academia and go looking for classes.  If I'm doing self-study, it's in a subject that is personally interesting and/or a freelance project and not directly applicable to my career such as (glances at shelves) zen, the first mission to Hawaii, gardening, and Elizabeth I.

Linnea Dodson

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